My patchbay SUCKS! I need a new one! (suggestions?)

S

saxman72

New member
Does your Re'an patchbay suck? Mine does!!!

I've seen a few other posts up here with people mentioning the same snaps, crackles, and pops from their Re'an suck-bays. Some of my connections drop out completely!

Shoot! If my whole damn life savings is connected to something, it might as well be good! (not to mention the countless hours of handmade cables)

So what's the BEST patchbay out there with the same kind of features? I need a 48 point balanced bay with all three normalling options. dbx? neutrik? hosa? ace? something I've never heard of?

As of tonight, price is not an issue. If there's a great bay for a good price, that's great. But if there's a better one for more, I'll pay more. It ain't a bargain if it SUCKS!!!

So what should I get? (and where?)

Thanks guys!

saxman72
 
My entire bay is composed of 8 Re'ans - never a problem once... but if you want to upgrade to the majors, you have to go with a Bantam-type bay... 'course that means all new cabling and jumpers!!!

Whatever you do stay THE HELL away from Hosa!!! :eek: :D

Bruce Valeriani
Blue Bear Sound
 
For 1/4" TRS patchbays of the Rean type (jacks both front and back), the Neutrik seems to have a pretty good reputation. It is switchable to get all flavors of normalling by pulling individual cards out and rotating them, and it is made with Neutrik's fairly-decent PCB-mount plastic-frame jacks. If you're going to just change bays and stay with the same type, that may be the best bang-for-the-buck. I have a few acquaintances who like them. I've seen the Reans go intermittent after just a few tens of hours of work- the jacks do not seem to hold up that well under heavy patch-changing use. That's probably true of *any* of the shortframe, low-cost, PCB-style bays, though.

If you're going to be doing this stuff for a long time, putting lots of hours on your rig, and making lots of patch changes, I'd have to advocate going with a telephone-style longframe patchbay (Switchcraft or equivalent). Mr. Valeria recommends the bantam size, but I like the full 1/4" size better- primarily because the labels can be big enough that even I can read 'em. Bantams are _teeny_ little bastards, and I hate both soldering on them, and then squinting to find the right hole to plug this thingus into that thingus...

Redoing your patchfield with longframes is a lot of work up front, and does require a lot of stripping/soldering/cable hacking, and some nontrivial cash outlay. But in terms of overall reliability and hassle-prevention down the road, it just simply can't be beat. Simply getting rid of half the plug/jack pairs (since the cables are terminated directly on the jacks, instead of being plugged in on the back side) is a huge win...
 
where can I find Furman or Neutrik?

Thanks for the replies guys.

I think I'll try a 1/4" bay one more time before I dive into the bantam type. (especially since I've already done all the soldering of 1/4" trs plugs.)

So where can I find a Furman or Neutrik? All I can find on the web are Re'an, Hosa, Ace, and dbx.

Wow, Bruce! 8 Re'an bays and zero problems huh? Wanna trade? Some of my bad points work *okay* if I actually patch them. Most of the problems occur when I rely on the *normalled* con....nec... ...tion.


saxman72
 
Check with Full Compass, for one:

http://www.fullcompass.com

My catalog shows the Neutrik "on sale" for $90, and the Furman lists at $169- so you can probably actually get it for $100-110 (I haven't ever priced it from them, so I'm not sure). They also have AP Audio, ProCo, and Switchcraft on the same page. Other vendors have these as well- I've seen the Neutrik version at Guitar Satan, for example.

With some patience, a pair of fine needlenose pliers, and some Cramolin (or whatever does the same job these days), you can probably temporarily fix those normalling contacts. The problem with most of the inexpensive TRS patchbays is that the normalling contacts are fragile. If you have the habit of pulling the patch cords out by the wire, instead of the plug shell, you can pull them out off-axis. This allows the plug to cock, and can lead to overstressing the contact springs to the point that they won't close reliably again when the plug is out. You can bend them back to get them to close again. It's a temporary fix, at best, but it can get you through a jam.

The longframe jacks work around this by guiding the plug sleeve much better, and by having very long spring arms on the normalling contacts (compared to shortframe panel jacks). This pretty well makes it impossible to mung the spring arms by awkward unpluggings. You _can_, however, mung them by using regular 1/4" TRS plugs instead of the telephone type plugs with the spring-lifter tip. Or worst of all, the mil-type PJ047 1/4" plugs with the round ball tip. With a longframe bay, you should only use the longframe 482 (WECO or telephone-style) plugs.

If you do use the cheaper TRS bays, make sure that you _always_ pull the plugs straight out by the plug handle. That will maximize their usable lifetimes.

I still have like a pint of each flavor of Cramolin (contact cleaner and preservative) still left over from the old studio days. It's good stuff for tidying up connectors and switch/jack contacts that have gone intermittent or noisy, but can't easily be replaced...
 
Saxman... not only have I not had ANY problems - 6 of the 8 are normalled and they work great! Sorry dude... guess I just lucked out!!! ;) I'll sell them to you at, oh - I don't know - maybe $500 apiece!!!

Skippy... Cramolin has now been superseded by the various flavours of CAIG's DeOxit....

:D

Bruce
 
Thanks for the clarification! I'd seen that written about, but didn't know that it was regarded as equivalent. My 15-year-old Cramolin still seems to work, but I'll have to try our some DeOxit when I run out.

Which, given my current rate of consumption, should be in about 2139. (;-)
 
Skippy... :D

FYI - The CAIG stuff is just as effective. The main difference is the only-slightly-more-environmentally-friendly formulation than the Cramolin was!

Sounds like by the time you need it, it'll probably be marketed on yet another name! :)

Bruce
 
Furman Patchbays

Sonusman,

I assume you are talking about the Furman PB-48's? I bought 5 of them on E-bay for $250 total. I'm not sure if that's a good deal or not... but it seemed like it.

I'm not sure how they work yet, as I have not blown the wad of cash needed to purchase all of the wiring for them.

The PB-48 is a balanaced 48 point patchbay. 1/4 trs jacks on the front and the back. Switchable from normalled to half-normalled by flipping a card (remove two of the rack screws and take the face plate off.

I had some trouble getting all of the cards lined up when I removed the face plate, but found a few tricks to getting the darn thing back together again.

Anyone know anything more about these?
 
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